Did I have time to get inside and have a good look around? If I did, how would I get back out without slicing myself on the tiller blades? While I debated whether to abort or go for it, my phone vibrated. Cleo with a text? I stepped down and read her message. Tucker’s leaving. Echo, Keely, and James staying. I had thirty minutes.
I stepped up on the tiller, grabbed the windowsill with both hands and pulled myself up until I hung there half in and half out. A work table below the window made it easy to drop down inside. I pulled latex gloves out of my pack and slipped them on.
The shop reeked of a foul mixture of musky animal hides and noxious chemicals. I used a pen light to scan the large space. As I suspected, the mounts nearest completion were all game animals. Deer, antelope, a wild boar, two black bears, even a wild turkey. I spotted some large forms stacked on a pallet in one dark corner. I went closer and saw a horse’s head and neck formed from some kind of smooth ivory-colored sculpting material, and next to it, two horse’s hindquarters made of the same material. Neither of them had hooves attached. They were much larger that I’d envisioned. I tried to lift one, to judge whether it could be used to strike a blow, but it was too heavy and probably too awkward even for someone much taller and stronger.
A glance at my watch told me I had fifteen minutes. I looked around in confusion. I’d been so sure, and so wrong. There had to be something smaller with a horseshoe attached. My only hope was that some part of the murder weapon was hard to replace. Had Tucker used one of the hooves destined for the full-body horse mount? If so, he would have dismantled the weapon and put the hoof back where it belonged. I went back to the pallet and looked around. I spotted a box on a nearby table. Inside it were three hooves. Where was the fourth? Tossed along the freeway the night Cody died? Or hidden somewhere until the hoof could be put back in the box? Or was I making desperate assumptions about something that didn’t exist?
A closed door at the back of the room was the only place I hadn’t checked. It was worth a minute to take a look. It opened into a hallway with a bathroom on the right and a closed door on the left marked with an orange flame. I trained the beam of my pen light on a chart on the door marked with a grid. Hand-entered dates indicated when the incinerator was fired up, once a month. The last date had been three weeks earlier—a week before Cody died.
I pushed the door open. The room felt refrigerated, but it smelled like death. A large stainless-steel cart was piled high with flesh and bones, cartilage, and other animal parts I didn’t want to think about. It had to be where they stored the waste headed to the incinerator. I was still wearing my latex gloves, so I clenched my teeth against nausea and began shifting the mass around to see what I could find.
After a few long minutes I uncovered a plastic garbage bag and inside it, found what I was looking for. The makeshift weapon looked like an old wooden hatchet handle about eighteen inches long with a horse’s hoof attached. It was the perfect size to use as a club, and there was a horseshoe attached to the hoof. The shoe was a perfect match to Game Boy’s, except for two missing horseshoe nails.
I pulled the DNA swabs from the kit, but decided not to use them. With luck a legitimate forensics tech would process the weapon and find evidence of Cody’s skin cells on the shoe. I didn’t want to chance wiping them all away. I dusted the handle for prints, expecting it to be wiped clean, and it was. But Tucker had forgotten about the plastic bag he had used to wrap the weapon. I managed to tease up a few prints there and took half a dozen quick photos of both the prints and the weapon. With a small magnifying glass from my kit, I inspected the horseshoe and hit pay dirt—a few human hairs partially wedged between the horseshoe and the hoof. Cody’s hair. I took two of the hairs and left the others. With the hair samples secure in my kit, I stuffed it in my day pack, along with my phone. I put the horseshoe club back in the plastic bag and shoved it back under the offal pile.
I closed the door to the waste disposal room and checked the schedule on the door one last time. Another week before the incinerator was due to burn. If it was Tucker who hid the club there two weeks ago, he must have been confident it wouldn’t be found before he could get back to it. Despite the week remaining before the scheduled burn, that critical evidence could disappear at any moment. Hoping the truth of what had happened to Cody would come out before it did, I hurried back to the table in the shop and lowered myself out the window. If I didn’t fall against the tiller blades, I was home free.
“Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
The man’s shout came from somewhere inside the shop, but it couldn’t be Tucker. He hadn’t had time to drive home. And James was still at the hospital. Who else could it be?
Hanging outside the window, I managed to touch the flat surface of the tiller with the ball of one foot. I pushed off and threw myself clear, landing on all fours. I took off running a zigzag line toward my car.
“Stop or I’ll shoot.” The voice sounded raspy and the words were slurred, but the shot that rang out wasn’t a warning. The bullet nicked a Juniper bush inches from my head.
I pulled off my day pack as I neared the fence, tossed it over and dove under like a ball player sliding into home base. I scooped up the pack and dashed the hundred feet to my car. In spite of my shaking hand, I got the key in the ignition on the first try. The engine turned over and I stomped the gas pedal, leaving a cloud of smoking rubber in my wake.
So the O’Briens had a security guard after all. One who wasn’t expecting an intruder to wake him from what was probably an alcohol-induced slumber. He hadn’t even chased me to my car—bare feet, I guessed. Would Tucker suspect it was me in the shop? I’d been wearing a black ball cap with my hair twisted up inside, and the guard hadn’t heard my voice. I hoped he would assume the incident was an attempted burglary, something all too common in Coyote Creek. A look in my rearview mirror confirmed I wasn’t being followed. At least not yet.
Chapter 31
Half a mile from the O’Brien ranch, I spotted headlights coming toward me in the distance. Would Tucker recognize my car? Maybe. Coyote Creek was a small community. A gravel road came up on my right. I turned in and kept going, but slowly, watching my rearview mirror. The vehicle kept going toward the compound. When it was out of sight, I pulled out of the side road and headed home.
My cellphone rang as I approached Jack and Amah’s driveway. Their house was dark and Nick’s car was there. I cut my headlights and drove down the lane by moonlight. My cellphone kept ringing, but I wanted to get inside my apartment before I answered. When I reached for my doorknob, the door swung open.
“This had better be good.” There stood Nick. I felt my jaw drop, but I couldn’t seem to close my mouth.
“Sit down,” he said, “and start talking.”
Nick sat at my dinette table with his arms crossed over his chest. My cellphone rang again. Cleo calling. I answered, expecting the worst about Seamus.
“What is it?”
“Nick knows,” Cleo said. “I’m sorry, I got worried about you and called him. I wanted to warn you before you got home.”
“Too late.” I glanced at the storm clouds riding across Nick’s face and nearly broke out in hysterical laughter. “Are you still at TMC? What’s the status on Seamus?”
“I’m home. Seamus is responding to treatment for the time being.”
The world felt lighter for a moment. “Really? That’s amazing.” I told her I’d call her first thing in the morning.
Eager to tell Nick what I’d found at the compound, I put my phone down and dropped my day pack on the table. He started on me before my bottom hit the chair.
“I won’t waste my breath telling you how angry I am.” He reached out and brushed something off the shoulder of my jacket. Bits of a juniper bush? “Cleo claims you weren’t in any danger, but you don’t look like a walk in the park. What happened out there?”
“Wait. First, how’s Ginger?”
“She’s going to be fine. Don’t change the
subject.”
I told him most of the story, including the part about finding the makeshift club buried in offal destined for the incinerator, but I left out the part about the man who fired at me. I ended with how I was certain Tucker was behind the whole scheme, including chasing Laurie Popejoy all the way to Idaho and shooting at us in the Blue Banjo parking lot.
“There’s a problem with that theory,” Nick said. “Tucker never left Timbergate.”
“What? That’s impossible. It had to be him. Who else is there?” Then it dawned on me what he was implying. “Don’t tell me you think it was James.”
“James never left Timbergate either.” Nick looked down at a piece of paper on the table in front of him. “This is a report of their activities during the time you and I were in Idaho. They never left town.”
“What? You had them under surveillance?”
“Something like that. The point is, we were being targeted by someone in that parking lot, most likely whoever was after Laurie, but it wasn’t Tucker or James.”
“Then it was someone working for Tucker, right?”
“Or James.” Nick said.
“Or Phyllis Poole,” I countered. “Maybe she hired the guy out at the O’Brien compound who—” I nearly choked trying to hold back the rest of my sentence. The gunshot wasn’t something I wanted to blurt out, but it was too late.
Nick’s face clouded. “The guy who what?”
“Okay, if you’ll stay calm, I’ll explain.” I told him the rest of the story.
“Someone shot at you tonight? Were you going to leave out that little detail?”
“It was just a warning. I didn’t want to worry you.”
I showed Nick the photos on my phone of the makeshift club and the fingerprints from the plastic bag. “I think that club is the murder weapon. There were strands of hair on it. I’m hoping it’s Cody’s hair.”
“You think and you hope.” Nick wasn’t one to see the glass half full. “How do you expect to use it? You can’t just waltz into the Sawyer County crime lab. As soon as you told them where you got your evidence, you’d be charged with breaking and entering.”
I refused to think I’d gone through the ordeal at Seamus’s compound for nothing. The forensic evidence was in my kit. It might be worthless in court, but maybe there was another way to use it.
“What about Harry?” I said. “Maybe Keely mentioned something to him about a grounds man or caretaker at the compound. Should I call him?”
Nick yawned and ran his fingers through his hair. “Might as well.”
Harry sounded sleepy and annoyed. “You realize it’s almost two in the morning?” he said.
“Sorry, but this can’t wait.” I gave him a rundown of the evening’s events, ending in someone firing what I described as a warning shot while I fled the compound. He was silent so long I thought he’d gone back to sleep.
“Harry? Any ideas?”
“Give me a minute. I’m so furious with you for going out there alone I can’t think straight.”
“Sorry, but I didn’t have time. The window of opportunity was too narrow. I went alone because it seemed quicker and perfectly safe. Let it go and just tell me if Keely mentioned any hired help working at the compound.”
“No, but I could probably call her tomorrow and ask.”
“Okay, please do that before we meet with Nick at noon.”
I filled Nick in on Harry’s half of the conversation. There was nothing we could do to identify the new man at the compound before morning, and it looked like Seamus might make it through the night. We both needed sleep. I had to be at work in a few hours, and with the CME program on the calendar, my work day would last well into the evening.
Out my kitchen window I watched Nick walk alone up the lane to the main house. My throat tightened at the memory of all the times I’d walked by his side. I wondered what it would take to find the right balance between independence and mutual trust that would set us back on course. I hoped it would be soon, and wondered how many other couples faced the same struggle.
Chapter 32
Cleo and I arrived at work early Wednesday morning so we could meet in her office before the day kicked into high gear. We sat at her desk at munching granola bars and sipping coffee while we compared notes. I had finished telling her about my visit to the O’Brien ranch. It was her turn.
“As of six o’clock this morning, Seamus is still alive.”
“That’s great news. Is there any word on Tobias Fausset’s whereabouts?”
“Not a whisper. It’s creepy,” she said. “Like he’s vanished into thin air. Sorry, but it looks like you’re stuck with Dr. Poole running the CME program tonight.”
“Yeah, the fox presiding over the hen house, except reverse the genders.”
“Exactly. A hungry female fox in a room full of roosters.” Cleo’s forehead was etched with worry lines. “There’s no way she’ll have her privileges suspended in time. Siggy’s going under her knife at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“Why don’t you attend the program tonight? You have clearance for all medical staff meetings, don’t you?”
“I do, but Continuing Medical Education is your bailiwick. I wouldn’t want anyone thinking I was there to coach you because Beardsley’s out of town.”
“Don’t let that stop you. This isn’t about my ego.”
“I might show up before it’s over, but there’s something else I want to check on, and I won’t have a chance until after work. “
“Does it involve Poole?”
“I don’t know about that, but something you said about autopsies just before you left my office with Quinn has been bothering me. I looked through DeeDee’s chart again before I returned it to the archives. She died here at TMC under a physician’s care, and there was no suspicion of foul play, so you were right, when her autopsy was done, no blood was drawn for toxicology tests. Her case was classic. A delayed coma isn’t uncommon if head trauma causes bleeding into the brain. Her death certificate showed cause of death consistent with the head trauma.”
“Then what is it that’s troubling you?”
“There should have been lab work done by TMC’s lab when she was admitted here. Her chart shows it was ordered, including a tox screen, but there was no lab slip of any kind in her chart.” Cleo drew an asterisk on a notepad on her desk, then circled it. “Doesn’t that seem odd? She was admitted to the ICU, for God’s sake.”
“How long was she here?”
“Not long, why?”
“Maybe she died before her blood could be drawn.”
“I didn’t think of that.” She tapped the notepad with her pen. “But there’s another possibility. What if lab work was done? What if it was misfiled?”
“Maybe you’re right, maybe—”
“What?”
I scooted to the edge of my chair. “Remember, she had two different names. Deirdre DeGraw and DeeDee Dakota. Maybe some Health Information clerk messed up and two charts were made.”
“No, I looked for a chart for DeeDee Dakota when I couldn’t find her as Deirdre O’Brien. The only patient record made for her was Deirdre DeGraw. But there’s a chance her lab work was misfiled in someone else’s chart. Someone with a similar name who was a patient here back then. I’m going to see if I can find any names that look promising. If I do, I’ll go back into the archives tonight.”
You’re serious? You’ll go back to that cave?”
“I will if I have to. Sig has already been admitted to the surgery floor. He’s on the schedule for six o’clock tomorrow morning. It’s my last chance to see if there’s anything connecting that hospital in Idaho with DeeDee’s death here at TMC. If I can convince him that Poole’s a criminal or a psycho, he won’t go through with the procedure. And tonight is ideal. The basement will be deserted. I don’t know how long it will take, so if I don’t show up at the CME program, meet me here in my office when it’s over.”
Cleo’s office door opened and we both
stopped talking. It was one of the housekeeping staff, the man with the ghoulish ear gauges who had introduced himself to me in the library as Cliff Weber.
“Sorry to interrupt, ladies, just here to empty your trash.” He walked over to the shredder sitting next to a row of metal file cabinets, dumped the contents into his cart, and replaced the liner. He nodded toward the wastebasket near her desk. “Need that one, too.”
Cleo pushed her wastebasket toward him with her foot. “What happened to Louise? She usually comes by in the morning.”
“Vacation, I guess. They told me to cover this floor today.” He dumped the basket, replaced the liner, and giving us a salute, went out the door whistling softly.
Cleo shook her head at the closing door. “I hope Louise gets back soon. I’d hate to start every day looking at those ghastly ears.”
I laughed. “I know what you mean. He’s been in the library a couple of times and I always try not to look. He must fill in wherever the Housekeeping Department needs him.”
“Looks like it,” Cleo said. “Let’s get back to DeeDee’s lab work. I’m going to drop by Health Information right away to see if I can come up with any names similar to Deirdre DeGraw. I’ll let you know what I find.”
I left Cleo’s office after she said again that she would try to drop by the CME program when she was finished in the basement archive room. It was a last-ditch effort, but she was determined to see if she could find a misfiled lab report for DeeDee. I figured she’d be finished with that well before the CME presentation ended at ten o’clock.
In the library I checked my cellphone and spotted a text from Nick telling me that he and Harry had decided the three of us should meet at Harry’s job site trailer at noon instead of driving out to the ranch in Coyote Creek.
My last-minute preparations for the CME program were almost complete. Every member of the Surgery Department was required to attend, so the hospital’s banquet room would be prepared, including audio-visual equipment set up by the IT staff. The Dietary Department would arrange banquet tables for nearly a hundred meals. After I checked in with IT and Dietary, I had to make sure I had enough evaluation sheets. Every doctor who attended was supposed to grade the program.
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